Chevrolet has confirmed it is to form its own fleet team, separating from the GM UK Fleet operation it has been housed under since 2007.
Before the end of the year, the brand will announce a new national fleet sales manager, who will head the team of four and report into Chevrolet UK boss Mark Terry. There won’t be a complete separation from Vauxhall, though, as Chevrolet will still make use of GM UK Fleet back-office functions such as remarketing defleeted vehicles, dealing with daily rental firms and the Motability operation.
“This is a brand new dawn, a brand-focussed organisation, another stage in the evolution of Chevrolet,” said Terry, who added that GM’s failure to agree a deal with Canadian firm Magna to sell GM Europe, including Vauxhall, is actually of benefit to Chevrolet.
“We’ve got a win-win in a sense. With the Magna deal we were to become competitors, so for legal reasons we had to leave parts of the business, including GM UK Fleet, but now we have a collaborative opportunity,” he said. “Where we need to we can bring brand-specific focus, Chevrolet people enthusiastic about Chevrolet product to Chevrolet customers while maintaining the back-office support of Vauxhall. Magna not going through is a massive opportunity for us.
“Under a competitive environment I was quite anxious about leaving Vauxhall, but now we don’t need to do that because we’ve got this win-win.”
Terry said plans to separate had been ongoing since April, with Chevrolet far enough down the line to have found new premises to move into once the Magna deal was completed. But that now won’t happen, with the brand renting space at Vauxhall’s Griffin House headquarters in Luton. “But the situation has allowed us to rewind and take a breath and not do some of the things that don’t make sense under the collaborative approach.
“It’s been done in collaboration with [Vauxhall UK boss] Bill Parfitt – it’s the best plans for Vauxhall and Chevrolet, not a ripping apart,” continued Terry. “This move does represent another plateau for us to climb onto. We realise where we are now – we’re very stable and it’s time to go to the next level.”